


Not the Only Traveler Who Has Not Repaid His Debt

by MoanDiary



Series: Strange Trails [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4025092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max can’t pinpoint exactly when he started measuring times, distances, and places relative to the Citadel. The Green Place. Her.</p>
<p>But it happens all the same. Happens easily. Makes sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Only Traveler Who Has Not Repaid His Debt

Max can’t pinpoint exactly when he started measuring times, distances, and places relative to the Citadel. The Green Place. Her.

But it happens all the same. Happens easily. Makes sense. 

Whenever he comes across one of the scattered groups of decent people clinging to life in the wasteland, he directs them to the Citadel. It’s easier to just always remember the direction and distance to her instead of the relative positions of all the other lesser landmarks that remain.

He tells this to himself and pretends it’s true.

A threadbare father and his family of three give him an incredulous look when he describes the stone towers with water and green and safety.

“It’s real,” Max assures them. “Four days south-southeast. Tell them a fool sent you."

“If it’s real, why aren’t you there?” The father asks.

Max hears an echo of childlike laughter and catches something moving out of the corner of his eye, but when he turns, Sprog is gone. Never was there. He shakes himself. The family goes south-southeast. He goes north.

He dutifully marks points of interest on his map. Old bunker with ammo here. Heavily fortified gang hideout there. The stray unique rock formation or puzzling remnant of the peaceful time long since burned away. With each, he sizes up their position relative to the encircled skull that is his lodestar.

He went back once, yes. And again, though he couldn’t make it and she brought him the rest of the way. He doesn’t deserve it, but he craves it. To relax, to be safe, to be fed and watered and clean, to be surrounded by people with no ill will towards him is guilty pleasure. To be with her—next to her and touching her and inside her—is exquisite agony. She is the answer to a question he doesn’t know to ask. She’s a limb he hadn’t realized had been cut off. And each time he goes to her it’s all the more painful for the knowledge that he’ll have to leave again.

His work still lies out here. Whatever he’s searching for. He thinks he’ll know when he finds it. The door of a small house swinging open, a woman with long, dark hair and a warm smile whose name he refuses to remember spreading her arms to welcome him. A modest patch of green. Enough to get by. Something just for him.

That’s all gone now, he reminds himself. Gone because of him. Because he failed them. But still the horizon beckons him, mocking.

* * *

After a while, the people he meets aren't surprised when he tells them about the Citadel. Word moves slow across the sparsely populated wastes, but it does move. More and more are already on their way there, meager possessions strapped to motorbikes, in dusty trucks, across bent shoulders. Some don't even know what direction it's in, but they cling desperately to the rare hope it inspires. Max gives them a true bearing and sets them on their way.

Pretty soon no one will be left out here but him and the buzzards.

* * *

He realizes after a while that he's circling. Huge, meandering, irregular loops around the Citadel. There's always another trail of dust kicked up by a distant vehicle heading towards it that he needs to investigate. Some need encouragement, others discouragement. The discouragement is often ugly. Often, Max is the only one who drives away. 

"So it's you," a marauder pants as he lays on the ground, bleeding out from a bullet wound in his gut. "You're the Citadel's guard dog. We heard about you."

"Guard dog," Max grunts with something like amusement as he roots through the marauder's pack. "Hm."

"I knew that one-armed bitch sittin' all high and mighty on her water supply couldn't fight her own battles. They say all those War Boys only follow her now because she fucks 'em--"

In an instant, Max's boot is on the marauder's wound, pressing hard, and the marauder's screams are echoing through the canyon. He faints eventually. Max, who had been planning to put him out of his misery before he left, decides he's not worth the bullet.

It takes a few hours of driving before the red haze in front of his eyes abates.

* * *

Occasionally his comet's orbit takes him close enough that he encounters parties of Just Boys. As the the population of the Citadel grows, they have to range further out to scavenge for supplies.

He can spot the strange, ornate silhouettes of their uniquely creative vehicles from a long way off. This party appears to be circled defensively around a broken-down rig. As Max approaches, their black foreheads pop up in unison to watch him like so many meerkats, weapons at the ready. He parks a safe distance away and steps out of the Interceptor with his hands up.

"It's Max--Mad Max--Furiosa's Max--" He hears the whispers ripple through the Just Boys like wind across a dune.

"Max!" A woman's voice exclaims. The Just Boys part and a small figure walks out towards him. She pulls down the scarf covering her face and reveals herself to be Toast, the wife-turned-imperator.

"Hey," Max says. "Just seeing if you needed any help."

"This war rig was left out here a decade or so ago when it broke down in the middle of a raid. This used to be Cliff Lizard territory," Toast explains, turning and leading him towards the massive vehicle. "Furiosa wanted to see if we could get it running well enough to bring it home. Or tow it, if not."

The Just Boys part as they pass, revealing a team of blackthumbs hard at work in, under, on top of, and around the rig's engines. 

"What do you need another war rig for?" He asks. "Has there been trouble?"

Toast laughs knowingly at his gruff concern. "No, nothing like that. We've started planting crops down on the ground and we've been using the war rig for watering, but it's not enough. This baby's got a nice size tank and it'd let us expand much further." She slaps one hand on the hot metal of the empty tanker and it booms obligingly.

Max grunts. "Farming on the ground is a mistake. Anyone could get at the food. Or destroy it."

She gives him a strange look. "But no one does. And if we didn't do it, people would go hungry."

"Hm."

"You should come see it, what we've built." There is a hint of a sly smile on her face. "What you've built."

Max cocks his head, puzzled. "I haven't built anything."

"Then I suppose you're not the fool who sent us our seedmaster, or the woman who planned out our irrigation system, or the two old men who knew how to turn sour earth sweet. I should find the fool who did and thank him."

Max grunts and averts his eyes. _Yes! Yes! Go! You can drink your fill and sleep in a bed! Fill your tank! Eat something fresh and full of life! And see her! (See her!)_  His brain shouts at him. He turns to the blackthumbs working on the engine.

"You checked the fuel pump?"

He and the Just Boys work until the sun is low in the sky. And then the engine turns over under his hands, and he figures it's simplest for him to just drive it home.

* * *

For a place he thinks about almost every day -- the metric by which he measures everything else -- the Citadel is nearly unrecognizable. It's been four years since his last visit, and in the interim, the green that used to crown the tops of the mesas has spilled down their sides and out into the desert beyond. The community of tents and shacks that used huddle fearfully in their shadow has grown into a small town of mud brick and stone buildings, some of which are even two stories tall.

Terraced farms have been cut into the stone, or hang off it in long narrow platforms. Stairs climb around and into the towers, circumventing the selective tyranny of the great lift. The aqua-cola spouts have been fitted with pipes that carry water down and outward in a huge, continually branching web.

There aren’t walls or barricades, but watchtowers are spread evenly among the outermost fields, each containing several guards armed with binoculars and likely something much more lethal. The Just Boys manning one of the towers shout greetings and jokes to their friends in the convoy as they pass by. Hundreds of people are working in the fields. Some of the fields are full of plants and some are still being meticulously cleared and tilled, stones being carted away and dark, rich compost being mixed into the thin desert sand. 

The people stand to watch as they pass, raising hands in greeting, some performing the Vuvalini salute. They’re sweaty and dirt-streaked, but healthy. Their arms are rounded with muscle and they move easily, some still bearing the scars and lumps of half-life, but now strong enough at least to make something of it.

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Toast says, raising her eyebrows. Max grunts in agreement.

They pull the rig into a cavernous garage at the base of the main tower, next to another war rig that Max knows better than he knows his own name. The skeletal arm painted on the driver’s side door as been repainted by some enterprising Just Boy so instead of pointing forward, it’s giving a thumbs-up.

He hides a smile as he jumps down to the garage floor.

“Well, well, Toast. I didn’t think you’d actually be able to get it running—“ Furiosa stops dead when she comes around the back of the rig and sees him.

“These things are hard to kill,” he says.

Toast looks between them, not bothering to stifle a grin. “I’ll leave you two to catch up."

“You’ve been busy here,” Max says, gesturing vaguely to their surroundings.

“There are a lot more mouths to feed,” Furiosa says. “Thanks to you, I think."

He ducks his head a little, fidgeting.

“Mouths to feed are good,” she says, smiling. “Most come along with two hands to work. Or something similar,” she adds wryly, gesturing with her metal arm. He can’t help but grin back at her. Her hair is still shorn short but grown out a little. Light brown with flecks of gray.

She peers at his grease-stained hands. “Looks like you got a head start on that front. Let’s find you something to eat."

* * *

She brings him up to her quarters, much like she did the first time he came back. They were almost bare then, purged of all of Immortan Joe’s things and with very little of her own to replace them. Now the room is cluttered with work. Sheaves of paper filled to the margins with counts of plantings and crops and scrawled calculations for water rationing and building supplies. Bits of engines half taken apart. A shirt patiently waiting to be mended hung over the back of a chair. And one wall is almost entirely covered by what appear to be a child's paintings.

“Capable’s daughter,” Furiosa explains, following his gaze. “She loves to draw but we can’t spare the paper, so I let her do it on the wall in here."

Max hums in approval.

She feeds him and waters him and he can feel something inside him unfurling like one of the endless rows of growing green things below them. He marvels at how quiet his mind is when he’s near her. After he finishes eating, he just looks at her.

“You’ve been away a long time,” she remarks, as if commenting on the weather. She’s looking at him with a kind of wistful expression that seems foreign on her normally severe face.

"I still hadn't... _done_...enough." He can't find the words he needs under the weight of her gaze. He looks down at his hands resting in loose fists on the table. "I didn't deserve to be here."

“And now?” She prompts. 

He doesn’t know the answer, so he kisses her instead. She indulges him a for a few moments and then gently pushes him away. 

“There’s a bath down the hallway, if you want to make use of it. I can get you some clean clothes, too."

Max looks down at himself wryly. It most likely has been four years since the last time he’s done more than splash water on his face and neck. He’s also suddenly acutely aware of his matted hair and considerable beard.

Furiosa casts him a smile and stands. “Down that way,” she says in a tone that brooks no disagreement.

* * *

There are a few other men in the large communal bath, looking like they just finished a shift in the fields. Still, Max beats both of them with the amount of dirt that comes off his body when he lowers himself into the water.

One of the other men silently passes him a bar of gritty, foul-smelling soap and Max scrubs himself raw, exalting in the rare sensation of cleanness. His hair seems to be almost a complete loss, so he shears it off close to his scalp. His beard he trims as short as he can get it without the aid of a razor.

He slips on his dirty trousers again for the walk back to Furiosa’s quarters, carrying the rest of his clothes and his leg brace bundled against his chest.

Furiosa is writing at her desk and looks up when he returns, giving him an approving once-over. “Knew you were under there somewhere. Clean clothes are over there.” She points to the foot of the bed with her pencil.

Max peels off his trousers unselfconsciously and pulls on the clean ones. They’re made for a slightly larger man, but they fit him okay. He’s halfway into the shirt when he hears the door burst open. He scrambles to pull it on, and there’s a panicked moment where he gropes in the empty air next his hip where his holstered gun usually is.

Then his head emerges from the neck of the shirt, revealing a tiny red-haired girl who’s stopped short just inside the door, staring up at him apprehensively.

“It’s okay, Valkyrie,” Furiosa says. “This is Max. He’s an old friend of your mama’s and mine."

Valkyrie stares Max down suspiciously, then turns to the wall covered with her drawings. “Aunt Fury lets me draw,” she proclaims imperiously, producing a stick of charcoal from the pocket of her coveralls and going to work on a new drawing.

Max edges closer to her as if approaching an animal that could startle at any moment. She’s not much younger than his Sprog was, before.

“What are you drawing?” He asks.

“A sun and the orange trees and my friend Kev,” she says, indicating the various figures. “Kev is going to be a Just Boy. The orange trees don’t have oranges yet but Aunt Dag says they’ll have them when I’m this old.” She holds up seven fingers.

“That’s pretty soon,” Max says, crouching next to her to examine the drawing. 

“It’s…” She seems to struggle with the math for a moment. “I’m this old now.” She holds up four fingers, then returns to the drawing, adding several crooked rays to the sun.

Furiosa watches the two of them, a quiet smile on her face. After a few moments, she clears her throat. “Val, honey, I need to talk to Max for a little bit. Why don’t you go find Strix and see if you can help him out in the herb garden."

“Okay, Aunt Fury,” she says cheerfully, dropping the charcoal carelessly and trotting back out the door. Furiosa closes the door after her. Max is still looking wistfully after the girl.

“Cute kid,” he says.

“She’s a handful, even with all of us helping out. And too smart for her own good."

“You never had any?” Max asks, although he surely knows the answer.

“There were a few,” Furiosa says. “I killed them in the womb. It was a mercy. For them and for me."

“I’m sorry.” He lifts a hand to her cheek. This time, she initiates the kiss, walking him slowly back to the bed. She sits down on the edge and lets him undress her, sliding off her boots and leggings and unbuckling the straps that hold her arm in place. When she’s nude, he lays her back on the bed and takes his time kissing every part of her. It’s a luxury they never bothered to indulge in before, during their previous desperate couplings. And maybe then it was too intimate for her. Maybe she wasn’t ready for anyone to know all her secrets.

Eventually, he buries his head between her legs, kissing and licking until she’s trembling under him, grasping at his close-cropped hair as he strokes his tongue repeatedly across her clit, pushing her over a cliff into a seemingly endless free-fall.

When she recovers, he’s looking up at her, his lips swollen and wet, his eyes moving rapidly between her face and her heaving chest. 

“Come here,” she breathes, drawing him towards her and kissing him deeply. He groans into her mouth and braces himself on his elbows above her as she works on undoing the buttons of his recently-donned pants and pushing them down his legs. Then she grasps his length in one hand and guides it to her slick entrance, wrapping one leg around his hips and pulling him towards her.

He sinks into her with a muffled curse, burying his face in her neck. Furiosa revels in the feel of his length inside her. At first, he doesn’t seem able or willing to move, but then she shifts under him, rocking, and he starts to thrust. His rhythm evens and speeds up rapidly as he begins to lose himself in her.

She puts her hand against the headboard to ground herself, hiking her long legs up higher around his waist, which makes him rub against her deliciously with every thrust. Max is making small, almost desperate noises, watching her through slitted eyes, one arm supporting him above her and the other gripping her thigh.

“More, more,” she whispers, feeling another orgasm approaching like a storm on the horizon. He obliges, stroking her clit roughly a few times, urging her over the edge again.

The sensation of her muscles clenching around him pulls him along with her, and he spends inside her with a few final jerks of his hips.

He collapses beside her soon after, his chest heaving with effort. The deep creases in his forehead have finally smoothed and Furiosa thinks it’s as close to peaceful as she’s ever seen him look.

“Did you?” Furiosa blurts out, after their breathing has evened. He looks at her, puzzled. “Ever have a kid, I mean."

His face contorts in a strange mix of emotions, all of them painful. “Yeah."

She can understand the entire story without hearing another word. She curls around him protectively, running her hand soothingly along the lean muscles of his side. He sighs.

“I want to come home,” he murmurs.

“You’re here,” she says.


End file.
